Why a two-year Brexit negotiation is no such thing

As we wait for Theresa May to pull the trigger on divorce negotiations, here’s a reality check on what happens next.

All available evidence suggests it will be very difficult to complete a new working relationship between the EU and U.K. by mid-2019.

Agreement needs to be reached on around 40 laws and rules per working day between now and then. The backdrop to that schedule is that it takes a minimum of five months (the current speed record was set in 2015 with the Juncker Investment Plan) and an average of three years to agree a single EU law. This is not a system built for speed.

Add to that the fact that the two-year negotiating window is not really two years at all.

To begin with there will be around a two-month delay between the triggering of Article 50 and the beginning of negotiations proper, according to Council and Commission officials.

It is likely to take about 4 weeks for an EU27 summit to convene at which the EU’s negotiating guidelines would be agreed. The Commission will then take another week to finalize and authorize a negotiation directive or directives, which themselves will need to be approved by Council.

If for any reason Article 50 isn’t triggered by the end of March, everything from the EU’s five-day Easter holiday in mid-April through to the French presidential election start to become factors in the timeline.

So assuming no unexpected hurdles, Michel Barnier and David Davis could expect to get down to business in the first week of June.

There would then be 17 months in which to settle the U.K.’s bill, and if all went well, discussions on the post-Brexit relationship would follow.

By end October 2018, near-final legal texts will need to be available to representatives of national governments to begin consideration for final agreement.

A decision will need to be taken — either by EU ambassadors or possibly by EU leaders themselves — in December 2018, so the European Parliament (including British MEPs) can begin its own consent discussion by the end of January 2019.

All the way along texts will need legal cleaning up — “toilettage” in EU jargon.

Finally, in March 2019, it is hoped the European Parliament would be ready to consent in a plenary vote.

The British parliament would also be asked to give their consent.

And the only way out if everyone can’t agree is for both sides to settle on rolling over the discussions. That would require unanimous agreement in the Council. And at that stage the U.K. government would most likely learn, via pork-barreling requests from EU governments, that there’s no such thing as a free Brexit rollover.

This insight is from POLITICO’s Brexit Files newsletter, a daily afternoon digest of the best coverage and analysis of Britain’s decision to leave the EU. Read today’s edition or subscribe here.

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Sub- Continent

Spot on. There will be NO deal. The months ahead will be exploratory. Wading through the mud will waste time and effort – but will satisfy the audience that “we tried”. The best outcome will be to walk away with no deal! Whilst all this is happening with EU-mafia, in parallel chat is ongoing with other more sensible and equally relevant parties. The long term changed TRADE relationships with our cousins on the continent will hopefully emerge without the cr*p of the EU shackles.

Posted on 3/3/17 | 4:02 PM CET

CSK

Considering it took over 18 months for the Commission to respond to the migrant crisis (a deplorable lack of urgency, commitment and competence), it’s no wonder that the 2-year negotiation limit (actually 18 months) is unrealistic and unachievable.

If Britain is forced to walk away from the negotiations because of the EU’s self-imposed impossible time limit (which was set when the EU was much smaller), together with its inability to get its act together, then Britain should simply refuse to pay whatever it is the EU is demanding (currently this €60 billion sum that is being optimistically bandied around).

It will be the EU that will suffer the (financial) consequences of its own making.

Posted on 3/3/17 | 5:10 PM CET

Wim Romeijn

@CSK – a lot of drivel as usual from a brexiteer: Article fifty first made its appearance in the Treaty of Lisbon of 2009. Since then ONLY Croatia has joined the EU. Check your facts, please. And your suggestion to do an Argentina on the EU speak volumes. Just the sort of person who’d walk away from commitments. Some country you propose building!

Posted on 3/3/17 | 5:45 PM CET

YellowSubmarine

Seems a bit self defeating to trigger article 50 before end of May ? perhaps the Lords can be persuaded to drag things out a bit more.

Posted on 3/3/17 | 6:02 PM CET

Ronald Grünebaum

Only the Brits seem to believe in the constructive Brexit narrative. Article 50 was created with the intention to be never invoked. Nobody was expected to be foolish enough to leave the EU and actually the Brits leave a EU which only exists in the sick brains of the British gutter press.

The EU side knows that this will be a very harmful process for the leaving party, far less so for the EU. The UK can only try damage control within an impossible timeframe. And just walking away is even worse because the UK would breach its legal obligations, making it a rogue state with very limited perspectives in terms of future international agreements. Brits would appear as unreliable and pretty daft.

Posted on 3/3/17 | 6:06 PM CET

Maverick

@Ronald Grünebaum

Yes A50 is a shambles due to the incompetence of the EU as well as the arrogant assumption of the EU that no one would dare to leave.

I further suspect that any detrimental result will be more of a reflection on the EU than the UK.

Afterall how can the EU not arrange a trade relationship with a partner that has been an intrinsic member of the EU for 43 years.

Posted on 3/3/17 | 6:50 PM CET

terence patrick hewett

Allo Allo?

Posted on 3/3/17 | 7:39 PM CET

HenkVB

Lots of comments here on the slow acting EU. I know a country that needs eight months to only sign a bill of only 130 words, fully supported by an astonishing majority of their constituancies. (:

Posted on 3/3/17 | 8:12 PM CET

Bye bye EU!!

Thick Politico journalist, there will Be NO BILL for the UK. In fact the UK demands its share of all EU assets, from paintings, buildings etc and even down to the vintage wine in Junckers wine cellar. We also demand that all Interest from EU debts owned by the ECB bank, are paid directly into the U.K. Treasury, which is something like 37 Billion per year. Looks like the EU doesn’t have the money to play “Poker” after all!!

Posted on 3/3/17 | 10:54 PM CET

Team Juncker

Manservisi, DG of DEVCO (fired by Mogherini last year), the Commission’s largest DG, has sent below email with a new organisational chart for DG DEVCO on 25 February. While he is speaking of minor changes to avoid the member states and HR having a say, in reality these are major changes, especially in directorates B and F (formerly H, Asia). He is not involving member states nor the european parliament. In reality, he is putting his people in place,mostly Italians. When will he be held accountable and brought to justice? Everyone knows he is a difficult character (like most Italians), but Italians represent the second largest nationality in the Commission after the Belgians. Enough is enough! See below his email.

As you know, I presented a draft new organisational chart for DG DEVCO during the senior management retreat on 17 February 2017.

This chart builds on the discussions we held during the full management seminar of 11 November 2016 and its conclusions, which I shared with you in my mail of 23 November 2016 (Ares(2016) 6580354), and on a number of previous and subsequent informal discussions with colleagues.

As you can see, the modifications are limited. As I have said several times, DG DEVCO does not need deep changes at this delicate moment, where delivering effectively is an essential objective and duty. Rather, DEVCO would benefit from streamlining, clearer readability of its structure, and a solid change in the ways of working, which have been based for some time on an approach that has, unfortunately, encouraged ‘silos’.

In the light of this, the key drivers of the changes are the following:

1. To align the structure of the proposed new European Consensus on Development, to have an administration fully aligned with the policy framework.

3. To have visible and operational points of interconnection and cross-fertilisation:

a. The setting of two units bringing sectorial policy knowledge into the programming work of the geographic units and systematically liaising with sectorial policy units to ensure coherence and complementarity in the policy mix in a given country / region (D4 and G3);

b. To confirm and further expand units which are functionally working for several directorates;

c. To set within DEVCO and linked with the investment and private sector units, the Task Force which would later evolve into the Secretariat of the External Investment Plan (EIP). This Task Force will report to both DG NEAR and DG DEVCO.

4. To streamline the Task Force Knowledge, Performance and Results around three objectives: knowledge, performance (evaluation), and results. Units will be reshaped accordingly.

5. To streamline Directorate R to be able to deliver effectively the operational support needed and to be fully connected with the Commission corporate functions (notably human resources and IT).

I would like to draw your attention to the red boxes. These are not formally part of the organisational chart, since they are not administrative units. They are, however, key internal and upstream platforms to ensure internal strategic steer, coherence and coordination (as is already successfully the case with the BSSC).

Finally, I would like to underline one simple yet important fact: DEVCO is a Directorate-General of the Commission and it can and should work in close cooperation with all other services, those part of the Relex group (including the EEAS, under the responsibility of the HRVP) and those dealing with other EU policies, whose knowledge, expertise, and network are essential to our work. Working collectively will ensure strong and credible EU action.

I suggest you discuss this draft organisational chart internally and I would be pleased to have your views and feedback by the end of next week (3 March), directly to me.

I address this e-mail also to the Bureau of Heads of Delegations in order to liaise with the delegations for this same purpose.

I count, as always, on your collaboration and support.

Yours,

Stefano Manservisi

Posted on 3/3/17 | 11:22 PM CET

andy redman

The things quoted as advantages for the EU are actually it’s fatal flaws. The UK should just give up on these absurd fools in Europe and walk away ASAP

Posted on 3/4/17 | 1:20 AM CET

Jodocus2

The article is essentially misleading, and true to form, shouty Brexiteers rush in to add to the confusion.

There are tons of preparatory work to be done that fall outside the scope of “formal” negotiations and are already under way or will be started as soon as article 50 is invoked.

Starting with doing the sums on the “Brexit implementation costs” (a better word for exit bill) and building a spreadsheet model that’s sensitive to the kind of policy decisions that will come out of the negotiations. You need access to civil service data and civil service knowledge to do that in a proper and timely fashion. That work has already started. On both sides.

Of course reconciliation of detailed calculations will have to proceed under the control of those with a negotiation mandate, but there is no reason why lots of technical issues can’t be addressed (and resolved) in parallel.

Then there is preparation of a database of laws that will need to be considered and a smaller list that will need to be reconciled plus the likely implications of the most obvious ways to reconcile them. That too has been started already. On both sides.

There is ample opportunity to make productive use of the two months between the trigger and the first formal negotiations. Once machinery to identify, specify, and evaluate alternatives has been put in place, the actual negotiations can start to focus on any disagreements in principle. Political disagreements.

Then it all depends on how serious those disagreements are, whether 18 months is enough. One or two lawsuits are to be expected, but with expedited treatment they too could be resolved within the timeframe available.

It’s a good thing that negotiations will be carried out by civil servants and won’t involve people who vote in referenda or post in Politico.EU, or they’d take a hundred years.

And yes, there is a good chance that negotiations will need to be rolled over. As the article states, that too will be an item for negotiation but hardly a deal-breaker.

Neat new term “Negotiation rollover” for agreement to extension.
Difficulty is unanimity rule for that to occur.
With hindsight, a 2/3 rule would have been better to stop attempts
by mavericks to hold to ransom.
It is that unanimity requirement that will scupper things – making
non-agreed exit inevitable unless UK revokes article 50 and then
applies again (“work around” to gain extra time).
It should be noted that extension requires UK agreement and so
EU-27 cannot extend unilaterally.

Posted on 3/6/17 | 4:12 PM CET

Anthony Chambers

Be in no doubt, the UK will be leaving the EU in 2 years. The agreement will either include a full scale FTA with services and probably something more like €30bn to the EU or it will be WTO and zero to the EU.